With habits of distraction—such as constantly
checking our phone or spending excessive time
watching TV—the underlying thinking is typ-
ically that our present experience is boring or
unpleasant, and that doing something familiar
will be more interesting or enjoyable.
Habits of doing—when we’re leaning in to
the next thing we need to get done with a tense
energy—tend to have the underlying thought
pattern that something bad will happen if I don’t
keep moving.
Mindfulness provides skills and practices to
loosen our identification with thoughts, help-
ing us see that the content of a thought is not
inherently “true.” With attention, thoughts can
be observed and met with wisdom rather than
being acted out in habitual ways. For example,
when a familiar stimulus triggers the thought,
some ice cream would be nice now, we can
observe this as “wanting” or “wanting thought,”
rather than automatically going to the freezer
and scooping out a bowl of ice cream.
We can deepen our awareness of the emotions
and bodily feelings that often underlie and spur
our habits of thought and action. And where our
thoughts have hardened into beliefs that perpet-
uate unhealthy habits, we can investigate these
beliefs and untangle ourselves from them.
Observing thoughts,
letting them come and go
One of the most powerful realizations that we
can come to in mindfulness practice is to see that
we can bring awareness to thoughts and beliefs
rather than being lost in them or ruled by them.
There is all the difference in the world between,
on the one hand, bringing awareness to feeling
angry at something a colleague said—feeling the
tension and heat in our face and chest, paying
attention to our feelings of annoyance or the
thoughts of what we might say—and, on the other
hand, being swept up in the anger and the narra-
tive in our mind of how wrong they are, or what
we’ll say to them.
When we bring awareness to our thoughts,
choices open up for us—including the choice not
to believe or identify with our thoughts. When
we fail to bring awareness to our thoughts,
however, we have little choice but to act out old
thought patterns and follow them.
So, an essential mindfulness skill is to develop
a healthy relationship with our thoughts—see-
ing thoughts as ephemeral products of the mind
rather than the truth. When we practice mind-
fulness of breathing, or other objects of aware-
ness, we may get caught up in planning, worry-
ing, daydreaming, or remembering something
from the past. When we become aware that our
attention has shifted, we pause and invite our
attention back to our breath in a kind, gentle,
and non-judging way. It can be helpful to make
a mental note, “ thinking,” “planning,” “day-
dreaming,” or “worried thought.” The practice of
naming or noting “thinking” can help us observe
thoughts as passing phenomena, rather than
getting lost in the content of the thoughts.
An attitude of kindness and non-judgment
helps us develop a healthy relationship with our
thoughts; there is no need to try to empty the
mind. If thoughts can be experienced without
resistance, clinging, or judgment, they cease to
If you notice your attention caught
by an unhealthy distraction—such as
spacing out on the web—ask yourself,
“What would I have to experience if
I didn’t turn toward this habit?”